Antwerp - Finland
DAY 7
- by Nikki and Pol
- Thursday, July 21, 2022
Oh dear Belgium... National holiday, but we're sailing under the Dutch flag: so there won't be much to celebrate on board. Early in the morning you immediately feel the warmth outside.
The sky is bright blue, the water calm, and we make the wind ourselves as the Timca sails west at maximum speed.
After breakfast, all four of us stay at the table talking so long that at one point, cook Jim brings out all the plates for lunch.
After lunch (including pumpkin soup, meatballs with croquettes and cauliflower in white sauce, fruit salad...) we do get moving. Because it's too hot on the spacious deck behind the bridge, Nikki and I install ourselves with two chairs in the shade in front of the bridge. We watch as the Timca follows the same route as on the outward journey: past The Bridge and the busy Copenhagen airport through the Sont between Sweden and Denmark, on its way to round the point of Skagen.
When the ship picks up speed and the wind gets stronger and cooler, we move to the deck behind the bridge anyway. We watch some of the Filipino sailors who are busy with paint jobs, take advantage of the brief moment that the Internet works, read a bit, fall asleep in between. Then I go to the TV room to admire the performance of Wout Van Aert & Jumbo Visma in the last mountain stage of the Tour, until it's already time for dinner.
Outside, the weather suddenly turned completely.
The clouds are so low (or the fog is so thick) that you can't even see where the sun is, and the temperature, which in the afternoon was hovering around 27°C, seems to have dropped by half. So I'm quickly back in our cabin, where Nikki has finally brought out her drawing materials.
I myself have since gotten around to reading, "Enkele Reis Realiteit," a book by Ward Hulselmans, the very first passenger of CptnZeppos. Via Joris Van Bree, Ward made a trip from Antwerp to Dublin and Cork in Ireland in May 2019 on a German container ship of 11,000 tons, smaller than the Timca. On the six-day trip, he was the only passenger on that ship, whose crew consisted of Eastern European officers and Filipino "ship's proletariat."
His reasons for making such a trip differed from ours.
He was in the process of a major change in his life, and looking for the solitude and silence in which he could reflect on it. It did not matter so much to him that the contact with the officers was very limited and difficult. But give us the hospitality and kindness with which we were received and treated here.
Around 21h I go and have another look on the bridge. Outside it is only 15°C and very humid. The fog is so thick now that from the bridge you can hardly see the prow of the Timca. Yet it maintains its speed of almost 22 knots. And yet only the 3rd officer Dimitri is on watch. A bit tense. Perhaps it was not a good idea to watch an episode of the series Disasters at Sea on the Discovery Channel shortly before we left...
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